Democrats conquer the Senate, Trump overwhelmed by criticism

After counting the last votes by mail, Saturday 12, it was immediately clear that the confirmation of Catherine Cortez Masto as Senator from Nevada handed over control of the Senate to the Democrats. According to the projections of CNN and NBC, the seats of the Democrats are 50 against the 49 of the Republicans. The ballot is now awaited in Georgia, where neither of the two candidates has exceeded the 50% threshold, but the challenge of December 6 between the Democrat Raphael Warnock and the Republican Herschel Walker is no longer decisive. Kamala Harris in fact cast the deciding vote that gives the majority to the Democrats.

“We have a majority in the Senate and now we focus on Georgia,” he said Joe Biden. Who also says he is optimistic about the “losses” in the House, “but we have to wait for the results”. The president sent his congratulations to Cortez Masto from Cambodia, where he is for the ASEAN summit, meeting with the leaders of Southeast Asia, after being at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheik and before the G20 summit in Indonesia. Analysts argue that this internal victory allows Biden to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping from a stronger political stance compared to what was on the horizon on the eve of the Midterm elections.

The defeat in Nevada, after that in Arizona and Pennsylvania, is an important setback for the Republican party, which foresaw a “red wave” that would overwhelm the balance of Congress. The party appears increasingly split, also because Trump-backed candidates they have almost all lost: they were politicians who have always supported the thesis of the former president, namely that the 2020 elections had been “stolen” and that Congress had to be taken back, pending the return of Trump in 2024. Now this “ride” always appears more remote, and many Republicans have openly blamed Trump for the defeat. Fox, the network close to the Trump clan, also dumped him. The Donald, who in the meantime went to his daughter Tiffany’s wedding in Mar-A-Lago, Florida, defended himself by trying to blame Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, who allegedly “pushed” the candidates wrong.

We are now waiting to see if Trump will announce his run for the presidency in 2024 anyway, or if he will delay. According to Jason Miller, his adviser, it is confirmed that on Tuesday 15 the former president “will announce his candidacy”. In the meantime too Biden may choose to step aside after this political victory, to favor a younger democratic candidate. However, we will have to wait until the beginning of 2023 to know his intentions.